Dreaming Out Loud
by Hikasne
Summary: - "I can't believe you got into a fight the day before Christmas," she says. written for TheNocturne's contest.
1. dreaming out loud

**dreaming out loud,  
**& (a codename: knd fanfic)  
_title:_ dreaming out loud  
_author: _hikasne  
_words: 1,133_  
_torturetime: _30 LONG minutes, then countless hours of revising.  
_playlist: _a fine frenzy, michael bublé  
_snack: _peanut m&m's (only shades of blue)

-

_Every story, every good story, has a beginning…_

_-  
_He watches her from afar, that very day, watches her move like silk on water, watches her laugh, admires her.  
She's seen him. She hasn't let on that she has, but she has. She smiles, a little smile to herself, a secret smile, while he, he stares.  
He can't have her, though. She's the unattainable, the whispered secret behind the opaque curtains, to heavy for human hands to move.  
Or maybe she's not. Maybe she's taken with him, too.  
They make sparks, a kindling, a secret, a gentle whisper, taken with each other, not knowing it, but it will come.

Soon enough.  
(_--I just haven't met you yet.)_

_._

_._

_._

**ONE**

-

_(Break—all my thoughts hit the floor,)_

_I will do it today, _he promises himself, and today, he will. The ice is soft beneath her fingertips, but her expression is so utterly delighted that he _can _withstand the biting frigidness of the weather today. By the dim glow of the fairy lanterns hung on the bare branches of a leafless tree, her lithe body moves like water, pale and marbled with blue veins, lips and cheek rosy, long, graceful fingers, ever-moving, nails painted the blue of a summer-sky day. Silver tinsel and white strings of Christmas lights adorn the fingers of wood that reach toward the moon, never quite getting there.

The ice skids up from the sharp surface of her tattered white leather ice skates. Her obsidian hair flows seamlessly with the night, her snowflake-patterned fingerless—(and he doesn't see the point of 'fingerless' gloves; really?)—gloves revealing the bare milky skin of her arms and fingers. _Today._

They're in a small place beyond their house, alone and encircled by a thin line of bare trees, aglow with lights and lanterns. The city twinkles, alive with Christmas, below them further down a snow-laden hill.

_Stop falling! _That _was _what she said as she helped him up, yet again, laughing as he held on to her mittened hands, trying to prevent himself from falling butt-first on the ice again. His heart bounces around his ribs like a pogo-stick. Her small hands are frigid in his big, warm ones, and she can't helped but feel loved—_loved_—when she feels his heartbeat thudding in his wrist.

And of course, the adorable red tint of his face.

_Now, I'll do it now, _he fidgets with himself, and the small box in his pocket. She's in her own world, catching snowflakes on her tongue, arms spread as if to welcome the white flakes falling from the sky like stars cascading from the heavens.

His candycane-striped scarf (Kuki's Christmas present) still bears hot cocoa stains from her recent 'experiment' in the kitchen, and he can't help but think this _isn't _a mistake, despite what Hoagie says. She raises her fingertips, upward, her flannel shirt riding up on her rounder-than-usual stomach. She's completely, deliciously fertile, yielding, permeable, delicate, penetrable, her body soft, spent, begging to be touched, with the extra weight she's been carrying. She is eating for two now, after all.

The night's still vivid in his mind.

He hangs onto the bough of a stripped-white tree branch, hoping—_hoping _that he can ask her without falling flat on his face. Is no even an option?

_Yes, now, _he muses silently as he crushes her form to him as effectively as possible with only one arm free—the other hand still clings to the tree. Why, _why _must he be so helpless on ice? Her lips, accidentally or on-purpose-- meet with the warm, comfortable, soft, almost _feverish _tan skin at the base of his neck, heating her mouth against his collar. Her soft breath is warm, instead of cold like the snow he is now accustomed to. Her long lashes flutter at his pulse point.

He takes out the box from his pocket, opens it, hoping, hoping. She stares for a moment at the small, circular thing inside, gaze snapping away to stare into his emerald eyes, which are wide with anticipation, only to move back to the thing nestled in the small, black box. Her small white hands, swathed in her whimsically-printed gloves, fly to her slightly bruised pink mouth, lips a perfect 'o'.

She gasps, surprised, and, for the first time that night, loses her balance, her back going limp against his strong right arm, and this time, it's he who pulls _her _up, not letting her fall completely. His arm finds the small of her back and he adjusts her, lifting her on tiptoe, until their faces are inches apart. Her eyes are hazy, still stunned, and he leans down to meet her lips, soft, open and frozen. He smiles, amused, helping her for the first time that night, after she's helped him off his ass more than a few times. His hands cup around her small but firm pregnant stomach, not sure what he's supposed to say. Her own hand finds her belly, resting her fingers on the swell of her torso, feeling the baby kick against her palm. They look at each other, both of their appendages frozen on her kicking abdomen, the moment undeniably, unspokenly intimate, and strangely, sexy. Her mouth is still agape, waiting for something. She reaches for the box, wanting it.

He kneels, finally at ease with the ice, hand sliding off the tree.

--

Written for Sadie's contest, in case you didn't read the summary.  
+ALI


	2. someone to save you

**someone to save you,  
**_part of dreaming out loud,_**  
**& (a codename: knd fanfic)  
_title:_ someone to save you  
_author: _hikasne  
_words: 917_  
_torturetime: _45MIN  
_playlist: _john mayer, adam lambert  
_snack: _strawberry soda

-  
_There are bumps in the road, obstacles in the plotline…_

&

"Hey, buddy."  
Wally turns. Looks. A thug looking guy, smoking a cigarette. "Yeah?"  
"Who is that?" He blows a smoke ring towards a girl –_his _girl—rolling a shopping cart toward the parking lot, singing. Her raven black hair was swinging out in the wind behind her.  
Wally's gut tightens with anger. "She's…nobody. Don't look at her." He wants to grab her from the parking lot, kiss her possessively.  
The thug stops and smirks. "She looks like somethin' to me. If she's nothin' to ya, why can't I look at her--?"  
He can't help himself—his fist shoots out sharply, and the last thing he hears before a flurry of punches hit him is Kuki's cry from their car.  
(_--You make me laugh, you make me cry, but I guess that's both I'll have to buy...)_

_._

_._

_._

**TWO**

_(Pour me a heavy dose of atmosphere, 'cause I'll dose off safe and soundly,)_

"I still can't believe you."

She stands at the doorway, holding a soggy Kleenex, looking partway amused, partway about to burst into tears. Her thick woolen scarf is wrapped haphazardly around her neck, halfway hanging open to reveal her long white swan neck—a desirable place, he muses, to put his lips—but he can't think about that now; she looks angry.

_(--Cause I wish you were here—but it's not the same without you,)_

"Sorry," he says hoarsely. His lips, tongue, are so dry he can barely find the words inside himself. He wants to reach out, touch her, pull her to him, but his arms are frozen to his sides.

Her face softens, and she looks tired, beautiful, approaching him with her heels clicking on the silvery linoleum floors. Her hair is unbrushed, soft, a little damp with melting snow, tickling his chin as she leans over him with a sympathetic look on her face; a pained one. She runs one long finger across a scar reaching diagonally across his forehead—he closes his eyes, exhales—her expression is otherwordly: totally focused, as if touching his scar was the most delicate thing she'd ever done and she was suppressing her strength, fragile like a gentle bird in a cage.

_(--It takes two to whisper quietly, the silence isn't so bad,)_

Her voice comes out softly, unintentionally lusty (--or is that just him?), and she perches on the metal rail adjacent to his stiff white hospital bed. "You had to get into a fight the day before Christmas?" There's a humorous tonal quality tinged in her musical voice. Her breath comes softly, cool, comfortable, minty like a candy cane and sweet like hot chocolate. Snow flows down in torrents outside the window, setting the dimly-lit parking lot aglow with silvery flakes.

"Couldn't help it." He grunts, trying to hitch himself up onto his elbows and succeeding, only to fall back onto the pillows, pain shooting through both his broken casted arms. "Guy was ticking me off."

_(--I look at my hands and feel sad 'cause the spaces between my fingers are right where yours fit perfectly,)_

She pats him gently on the forehead just above his scar, smoothing the blond hair away from his face. She half-smiles, tucking her silky hair behind a delicate ear and leaning forward as if to whisper a secret to him. "Does he look worse?"

Wally grimaces—the pain is too extreme to manage an actual cocky grin—and nods. "'Course. Much."

_(--As many times as I blink, I'll think of you tonight (tonight, tonight, tonight,)_

She laughs, but it's a laugh teetering on the brink of tears. "Oh," she mutters, finally, as another pained look sparks across his face, so quick like lightning that she's not sure she's seen it at all.

The expression on her face forces him into silence, because she looks almost as fragile as he feels. Her eyes, an aubergine shade of violet and another subtle ultramarine hue of navy and cobalt, indigo, are shimmering with suppressed tears, her separated obsidian lashes glimmering threateningly.

_(--Violet eyes get brighter and heavy wings grow lighter I'll taste the sky and feel alive again,)_

"Don't—" he offers, and reaches up, ignoring the click of his broken bones, and presses his calloused thumb to the soft, rosy swell of one white cheek. Her visage is pogo-sticking from sad to angry, then an in-between, her mouth wavering.

He knows what she needs, what she wants. What he wants is to take her, just hold her, feel her soft skin under his hands.

"You're going to have to lean down," he says, sensing what she's trying to say and do, and hoping her thoughts mimic his.

_(--I'll forget the world that I knew, but I swear I won't forget you,)_

She looks momentarily surprised, then relieved.

"You did always know me too well, Wallabee Beetles," she murmurs, and leans down to press her lips against his, falling from the metal rail into the bed, using her elbows to hold herself up above him, pressing her lips together as if holding his kiss inside her, fearing it will flee into forever.

_(--I'd whisper in your ear: Darling, I wish you were here.)_


End file.
